william haines and the hostess chair

domino associate editor and cultural historian BRITTANY S. CHEVALIER makes us smarter about the popular designs we live with.

history lesson:

william haines and the hostess chair

In old Hollywood, William Haines was a silent-screen star and successful interior designer. He was also a legendary party giver. No surprise, then, that he created the Hostess Chair, a traditional piece with sleek midcentury lines that was tailor-made for gracious entertaining.

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1

Born in 1900 in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Haines was the third child of a cigar-shop owner. He ran away at 14, eventually landing in New York City. After working a string of odd jobs, he won the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation’s 1922 New Faces talent contest. With a movie contract in hand, Haines moved to Hollywood, where he soon became a leading actor of silent films and, later, the “talkies.”

2

In Hollywood, Haines found professional success, love (he and his life partner, Jimmie Shields, were together for 47 years), and friendship among the town’s elite. His Beverly Hills home became anepicenter of inspired living. Its aesthetic combined elements of traditional English and chinoiserie decor, a harbinger of Hollywood regency style. Soon, Haines was asked to decorate the homes of his friends and fellow movie stars, including Joan Crawford and Carole Lombard.

3

Haines’s acting career was cut short in 1933, when Hollywood instituted the Motion Picture Production Code, which dictated the “moral” content of films, as well as the private lives of performers. Forced to choose between his profession and his relationship, Haines quit movies and started decorating full-time. Haines and Shields were described by Crawford as “the happiest married couple in Hollywood,” but even in laissez-faire Los Angeles, their openness made them frequent targets of discrimination. In 1936, the White Legion (the Ku Klux Klan of California) invaded their home and assaulted them—an offense that went unreported for fear of negative publicity.

4

Haines’s acting career was cut short in 1933, when Hollywood instituted the Motion Picture Production Code, which dictated the “moral” content of films, as well as the private lives of performers. Forced to choose between his profession and his relationship, Haines quit movies and started decorating full-time. Haines and Shields were described by Crawford as “the happiest married couple in Hollywood,” but even in laissez-faire Los Angeles, their openness made them frequent targets of discrimination. In 1936, the White Legion (the Ku Klux Klan of California) invaded their home and assaulted them—an offense that went unreported for fear of negative publicity.

5

Haines kept working until the late 1960s. After his death from lung cancer in 1973, his business partner Ted Graber took over William Haines Inc., which continues to produce the designer’s furnishings. Today, his legacy as a 20th-century innovator endures.